Tuesday, March 30, 1999

As NATO continues to bomb Yugoslavia, it also said today that it is checking allegations by an Australian aid agency that at least nine people were killed when allied jets bombed two refugee centers in Yugoslavia overnight. CARE Australia said the bombs have severely damaged the refugee centers, which housed elderly women and children in the city of Nis, southeast of Belgrade. A NATO spokesperson said he was "confident that we have avoided significant civilian casualties."

We now take a look at the manufacturing of weapons by the United States. After a 22-month investigation, a newspaper in Ohio, the Toledo Blade, is publishing a six-part expose on how over a period of several decades, the United States government knowingly exposed thousands of workers to dangerous levels of a toxic substance used to make nuclear weapons. The series is called "Deadly Alliance."

Chevron yesterday barred a credentialed Pacifica Radio news reporter from attending a public news conference with U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. Wendell Harper, a 20-year veteran in news reporting for Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, California, was denied access to the press conference at Chevron’s San Francisco headquarters. He was there to cover Chevron’s announcement that it was phasing out MTBE additives from its gasoline. Fred Gurrell of Chevron’s Public Affairs office told KPFA station manager Nicole Sawaya that "Pacifica does not report news" and hung up on her.

DN! In Depth

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan — The corporate television newscasts spend more and more time covering the increasingly disruptive, costly and at times deadly weather. But they consistently fail to make the link between extreme weather and climate change.